The U.S. pork industry is urging President Donald Trump to renegotiate rather than withdraw from the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, or KORUS. The push follows on the heels of similar comments made by the President regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Farm groups are treating KORUS like NAFTA, arguing for renegotiation versus withdrawal. They succeeded in bending the president’s ear on NAFTA, and now hope to do the same on the 2011 KORUS that sharply reduced or ended tariffs on key farm products.
National Pork Producers’ spokesman Dave Warner explains...
Pork products would face huge tariffs without KORUS, as would U.S. beef and other ag exports to South Korea.
Warner says a key player in defending free trade agreements for agriculture is new USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue, who helped convince the president to stay in NAFTA last month.
Warner says his industry sells more pork to the 20-nations with which the U.S. has free trade agreements, than it does to the rest of the world, combined. He argues it’s only by negotiating new deals that U.S. agriculture’s able to reduce foreign tariffs, and the U.S. can reduce its overall trade deficit.
